{"id":44388,"date":"2014-06-02T01:20:18","date_gmt":"2014-06-02T01:20:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1\/site\/2017\/2\/1985\/in_sweden_human_darkness_is_confronted_by_the_arts_not_the_church\/"},"modified":"2014-06-02T01:20:18","modified_gmt":"2014-06-02T01:20:18","slug":"in_sweden_human_darkness_is_confronted_by_the_arts_not_the_church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=44388","title":{"rendered":"(Comment is Free) Giles Fraser&#8211;In Sweden, human darkness is confronted by the arts not the church"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The takeaway message is this: no one needs churches to be nice or tasteful. If churches have a future, it&#8217;s in addressing our existential darkness: sin and death. Progressive politics is important, but it doesn&#8217;t do any deep religious work. And liberals in the church will have to rediscover this after we have won our culture wars. What other religion has such a dark image at its centre? And yet my own brand of liberal Christianity too often seeks salvation through a few gentle verses of All Things Bright and Beautiful or lots of self-important dressing up and wandering around in fancy churches. Devoted atheists are never going to be persuaded by a theology of the cross. But no one whatsoever is going to be persuaded by a theology of nice.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/belief\/2014\/may\/30\/sweden-human-darkness-confronted-arts-church\">Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The takeaway message is this: no one needs churches to be nice or tasteful. If churches have a future, it&#8217;s in addressing our existential darkness: sin and death. Progressive politics is important, but it doesn&#8217;t do any deep religious work.<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=44388\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":794,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,50,42,175,168,200,93,155,108,424,452,34,427],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-watch","category-international-news-commentary","category-religion-news-commentary","category-anthropology","category-ethics-moral-theology","category-europe","category-movies-television","category-other-faiths","category-religion-culture","category-secularism","category-sweden","category-theology","category-wicca-paganism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/794"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44388\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}